Well, well, well. The Ranger has suffered in 5th Edition with the impression that it's underpowered - fairly or otherwise. This will, I think, probably change that.
While still built on the chassis of "basic martial abilities plus spellcasting" as a damage-dealer, the weird, idiosyncratic abilities of the 2014 PHB have been mostly replaced with the more broadly-applicable ones from Tasha's - something that one might be tempted to lament, but remember that this is why the class is so unpopular in the first place!
Let's start with Spellcasting:
There are two big changes here. The first is that, like Artificers (and, one presumes, Paladins once we get a look at them) you now get Cantrips and you also get spells starting at level 1.
The second is that you now prepare spells each day, rather than only learning a set number. This means that by level 20, you'll be able to prepare 15 spells, rather than the current 11, and of course, you'll more flexibly be able to swap between them.
Rangers can prepare any Primal spells they have spell slots to cast, except Evocation spells. Compared to the Bard's restrictions, this is pretty generous - you'll still be able to grab all those fun Conjuration, Enchantment, whatever spells. Just no Call Lightning (EDIT: whoops, that's not evocation. Imagine I said Moon Beam) and its ilk (note that healing spells have largely been reclassified as Abjuration, so no worries there).
Notably, because you can pick up Primal cantrips, this makes it very easy to pick up Shillelagh if you want a Wisdom-built Ranger (though your bonus action economy might be a little taxed).
Now, the one Ranger replacement-feature from Tasha's I really didn't like was Favored Foe. It felt like a poor man's Hunter's Mark that was overly restrictive and would become irrelevant at level 2.
The new Favored Enemy feature recognizes this and synthesizes it into something straightforward: You now simply automatically learn Hunter's Mark at level 1 (it doesn't count against your spells prepared). But even better, you don't have to concentrate on it to maintain it - Hunter's Mark simply lasts its full duration unless you end it as a bonus action or you become incapacitated.
This is excellent - it's still limited by your spell slots, so you might choose at higher levels to forgo it, but the lack of concentration on it means you can use it along with all manner of other spells - solving one of the biggest issues with Favored Foe. At level 18 (all the level 20 capstones were moved to level 18 to allow for Epic Boons as level 20 feats) Foe Slayer now simply raises the bonus damage to a d10 for you, rather than a d6 (while other people using the spell will be stuck with d6s).
Fighting Style is now technically a kind of feat - usually these are reserved for Warriors (Barbarians, Fighters, and Monks) but Rangers get an exception (presumably Paladins will as well,) and while you get one for free at 2nd level, you can also pick up additional ones at each feat level.
Roving from Tasha's is buffed slightly, giving you 10 feet of extra movement instead of 5. (You don't get the bonus if you're in heavy armor, but Rangers usually aren't).
You now get Expertise at levels 1 and 9, like Bards and Rogues.
Nature's Veil (from Tasha's) has been made baseline, though it now expends any spell slot instead of having limited uses per day.
You also get 30 foot blindsight at level 15.
As you can see, the class is not so dramatically changed, but a lot of the fat has been cut out and it's now built to play into its strengths a lot more.
Given the emphasis on Hunter's Mark, the changes to Light Weapons are also quite nice: rather than using a bonus action to make your off-hand attack, you now get that attack as part of your attack action, though still only once per turn. This means that a dual-wielder can now much more easily cast and then reapply Hunter's Mark without giving up their off-hand attacks. Given how synergistic that extra attack is with Hunter's Mark, that's quite nice.
Now, one of the ways in which Rangers have actually caught up in power since 2014 has been in the design of subclasses. I wouldn't be shocked to see the Beast Master as pretty similar to what we got in Tasha's, but let's take a look at the Hunter:
Hunter:
While the Hunter has always been, in theory, the no-frills Ranger option, the various sub-choices within the subclass were often heavily weighted to a single choice being best. Here, the fat is cut out and we get buffed and revised versions of the various best Hunter features.
At 3, you get two things. Hunter's Prey is basically Colossus Slayer, dealing an extra d8 once per turn to a creature you hit that's below its maximum hit points. This works on weapons as well as unarmed strikes.
Also at 3, you get Hunter's Lore. When you mark someone with Hunter's Mark, you automatically know its Immunities, Resistances, and Vulnerabilities, if any. This takes one of the best aspects of the Monster Slayer - I love having a mechanical way to discover those elements of a monster (I wonder if immunities includes condition immunities?)
At 6 (remember, all subclasses get features at 3, 6, 10, and 14 now) you get Multiattack. This one's weird: You automatically know Conjure Barrage, which doesn't count against your spells known. But the weirdest thing is that you can now "downcast" it, using 2nd or 1st level spell slots, and subtracting a d8 for each lower spell level.
Finally, at 14, you get Superior Hunter's Defense, which lets you use your reaction to take half damage against an attack that hits you, but then also lets you redirect the remaining damage of that attack to another target (other than the attacker) within 5 feet of you.
Putting it all together, a 9th-level Hunter Ranger could do the following: get Hunter's Mark up on their target, cast Elemental Weapon at 3rd level, and then hit with a longbow for 1d8+1d6+1d4, plus 1d8 on one of their attacks. Not too shabby.
I think it's interesting to see this idea of leaning into class mechanics as spells - Favored Foe in Tasha's seemed to really go out of its way to avoid simply being Hunter's Mark, and here they've just acknowledged that that's what it should have been in the first place (while also meaning that Hunter's Mark can play well with other concentration spells now!)
This class redesign is probably going to be the most radical, but nevertheless it has me very excited to see what is coming with the other classes.
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